Our world today

HareAVING had to read rants from everywhere -- the pros and the cons and those who just out there nitpicking for nitpicking’s sake -- came the desire to just be at peace. How? By switching off. We’ve become too connected, we can now listen and read and feel the rants of a person a whole world away from us, a person you don’t even know and isn’t likely to become a friend. Worse, we even pick up fights against that person who absolutely shouldn’t have mattered to us.

That person is a non-entity, and yet we chose to let that person in and be upset. In a recent gathering, a friend from another region walked over and greeted me. I was happy to see him, I haven’t seen him and his colleagues for maybe a year now. Thus, my greeting was followed by the question, “Who’s with you?” as I scanned the crowd.

He’s all by himself, he said, because his colleagues who have been joining the gathering since I don’t know when (I don’t regularly attend, that’s why), opted out this year out of fear that somebody might cause them harm. The Igorots are not frozen in time – can the Ibaloi woman in her smartphone know what it is like to carry a camote-packed Kayabang and walk ten kilometers to get home? Can the young Bontok guy in Assumption know what it is like to carry the head of his nameless enemy to the fires? Can the young Igorot today know what it is like to travel to the lowlands to trade meat for salt? I doubt that. They can only learn the cultural constructs, the tools; language, cultural dances, symbols. They can only wear their names and their ethnic wears. But beyond that, they have changed. The world today is different from the world before. The Ibaloi child in the past, admonished for simply beating the gong; “ngantoy, wara in-partian mo?”, is now encouraged to learn the tradition to keep it alive. “Entako men-gangsa” while infusing the Country music line dance in the routine is now tolerated. Times have changed.

Our traditional wears, as part of our heritage, were originally used in every aspect of our ancestors’ lives – both in joyful celebrations and mourning, in respectful gatherings and even in passionate protests, in the fields, and even in their homes. They wore it because it is part of them. Ironically,

That somebody, by the way, is really a harmless being but who loves to annoy people who has made it an avocation of sorts to pick on him for no other reason but because this somebody decided to take on another ca- reer track.

I rolled my eyes at the childishness of it all; the cowardice even. But I chose to be at peace and thus just told my friend to just enjoy the benefits of the job and stay away from all these pettiness of unimaginable scale. Taking a step back and watching the goingson online, we would see people who willfully chose to live with the negatives while living in a false sense of entitlement, expecting that the world will treat them kind in return.

Just yesterday in the news feed, we read about Sen. Franklin Drilon expressing worry over the drop in foreign direct investments as reported by the National Economic Development Authority (Neda).

the Igorots we judged for simply expressing themselves as Igorots (though I don’t share much of their political views) simply acted like the proud Igorots of the past.

on their farms.

Since the time GR research was started in the Philippines, rice scientists at Philrice and IRRI never stopped working to make it available to local farmers and ultimately consumers, according to Dr. Roel Suralta, GR Project team leader at Philrice. From the beginning, it was their commitment and ardent desire to ascertain if GR can really be an effective solution and remedy to the VAD problem.

This is the main reason why they have been sensitive to the public and their peers’ opinions of their activities, according to Dr. Suralta. “We are committed to doing the science right and making sure we comply with regulations along the way,” he wrote in response to an email I sent to him.

Their good work is being appreciated and rewarded in spite of the challenges. After militant activist destroyed their experiment in Pili, Camarines Sur in 2013, the Golden Rice Project got more support from Filipino farmers and local government “We note from the reports that there is a deceleration in new investment.

This is very alarming. Why such a huge drop? Is this an indication of anything?” Drilon was quoted as saying at the hearing on Neda’s proposed 2018 budget.

Neda has told the panel that the 90.3-percent plunge in FDI was caused by some restrictions, an answer the senators do not accept. True, it’s an unacceptable answer because the real answer should have been a slap on Drilon’s face.

His party stirs up so much controversy and goes around painting a negative picture of the Philippines in their desperate desire to grab power back, and they expect nothing to come out of all those negative spins? In the past, I would have raised hell and ranted against Drilon.

But no, I choose peace, and so I will just brush off this senator as he deserves to be, and say a little prayer for him; that may he find peace in his heart and that if he can’t, then may God grant him that in whatever way God chooses. SSCebu units, Dr. Suralta said.

“Over the years and at each stage of the project, we kept key stakeholders informed of our GR research activities. In the conduct of our multi-location field trials, we are supported by local government unit officials and community leaders who are well informed of the ultimate goal of our research – to develop GR varieties with good levels of beta-carotene.

Dr. Suralta said that as partners, the farmers and LGUs are a great help in ensuring GR could be evaluated as a potential way to reduce vitamin A deficiency. We are working together to develop this rice in a manner that complies with national policies at every step of the way, he explained.

“We are pleased that for each of our five field research sites, the barangay (village), municipal (city) and provincial governments adopted resolutions in favor of our Golden Rice research activities, especially the conduct of the field trials. These local leaders have remained actively interested in and are supportive of our work ever since, participating along with members of our locally-based Institutional Biosafety Committees and the media in regular seminars about biotechnology, healthier rice, and Golden Rice,” Dr. Suralta said.

–To be continued...